Sunday, April 13, 2014

We call on Brandeis Universitiy to re-instate their offer to Hirsi Ali of a Distinguished Professorship

Too often the headlines shout about the suicide bombers from the Islamic terrorists ranks, men and women ready and willing to sacrifice their lives for some "holy war on behalf of Allah" attacking infidels (Christians and Jews) merely because they are Christians and Jews. However, that phase, the bombing and maiming phase of this war, gets headlines simply because of the news editors' bias that violence sells newspapers, fosters advertising sales and enables the news outlets to generate an audience with which they would not exist.
Nevertheless, we must never forget that the Islamic terrorism against infidels (Christians and Jews) is also one of political activism, less noticed by the radar of the public media but clearly aimed at maintaining a "Teflon" perfection and resilience for the movement even when that movement is not actually killing people. And it would seem that Islamist radicals, whether they are members of the Muslim Brotherhood, or Al Qaeda, or Al Nusra, or Al Shabab, or ....(fill in the blanks of the many other names) including apparently the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) or the Muslim Students Association, part of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) are united in protecting Islam from criticism, from critics and from any kind of "inverted racism" that might be found in any action by any organization, government or institution through campaigns that literally job the head off that criticism before it can gain a public podium.
The recent story from Brandeis University, in which a distinguished professorship was originally offered to and then withdrawn from Hirsi Ali, an Islamic apostate, critic and champion of Muslim women's rights, demonstrates the level of danger of the co-ordinated, focused and effective tentacles of the Islamic revolution.
While our source for this story is The Jerusalem Post, we have no reason to doubt the truth of their reporting, nor the implications of the story. Here is an excerpt from the April 12, 2014 edition of the paper:By now, we all know that Brandeis University was about to bestow an honor on the elegant and distinguished author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, best known for her critique of Islam, her decision to leave Islam, and her championship of Muslim women’s rights.One might understand why an apostate intellectual might be in danger in Somalia, the country of her birth, or in Saudi Arabia, where she once lived.However, she has just been dishonored by Brandeis University, which withdrew its offer of a Distinguished Professorship because the Muslim Brotherhood in America, known to us as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and its national student group, the Muslim Students Association, which is also allied with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), mounted a successful campaign against the award.Both CAIR and ISNA are unindicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation terrorist financing case.CAIR provided the Muslim Student Association (MSU) at Brandeis with outdated, out-of-context and highly inflammatory quotes from Hirsi Ali. They did not provide her thought-provoking, stirring, moving passages of which there are many.Brandeis simply caved to the lynch mob.This is a terrible moment for academic freedom and critical inquiry on the American campus.Yale University drove the first nail into the coffin of academic freedom, freedom of thought, and critical inquiry, when Yale’s University Press refused to publish the Danish “Mohammed” cartoons to accompany Jytte Klausen’s 2009 book on the subject: The Cartoons That Shook The World.Yale drove a second nail into that coffin when it ousted Dr.Charles Small, who dared to focus on contemporary anti-Semitism, not merely on safely dead Jews. Dr. Small’s major international conference on this subject in 2010 had over 100 speakers and 600 in attendance.The conference did not demonize the Jewish or American states and it did look at Jew-hatred and the persecution of Christians in Islamic countries today. However, official Palestinians and student Palestinians insisted this was an “Islamophobic” conference. A campaign was mounted and Yale administrators and professors dismissed Dr. Small’s Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism, although it was independently funded.Brandeis University, the “Jewish” university, (in terms of liberal values), has driven the third nail into the coffin of academic freedom and intellectual diversity, when it bowed to student and faculty pressure and rescinded its offer to Hirsi Ali.
(By Phyllis Chesler, The Jerusalem Post, April 12, 2014)

While pointing the finger at Brandeis for abandoning its "liberal values", we believe that this story has implications that go far beyond the campus of Brandeis. We believe that in their concerted and co-ordinated and highly effective campaign to fend off all criticism, with too much impunity from the "politically correct" establishment too eager to demonstrate that the U.S. is not at war with Islam, the Islamic conflation of their many organizational faces, including both violent and political activist arms, must not be permitted this kind of escape from criticism. We also would posit that if Islamic critics are not going to be given a podium from a liberal western university, then the Islamic movement will "run the table" to use a poker metaphor, without fear or worry about any legitimate opposition. And, while there will be no editor (or perhaps no university president or perhaps not even an elected official) accused of an anti-Islamic bias, the Islamic movement will spread without having to defend its atrocities even in the most liberal of institutions where every other movement, including the movement to defend and sustain the state of Israel, must and does accept legitimate criticism.
Let's stop playing the fool in the conflict with Islam.
While there are millions of non-violent members of Islam, and also we suspect many who would decry the withdrawal of the offer from Hirsi Ali, we can neither condone nor accept the decision by Brandeis University, and ask them to re-instate their original offer.
If we are not confident and strong enough to point our finger at Pakistan as a sponsor of state terrorism and also a supporter of the Taliban, that segment of Islam dedicated to the repression of women and the armed opposition to their even acquiring an education, and also not willing to take the risk of appointing Hirsi Ali to Brandeis, we will be, if we are not already there, on the receiving end of Islamic ridicule for our own default on our own principles and values. And their ridicule will also have a measure of validity for which we have to take responsibility.
Islam, and all of its many faces, voices and agents, like all other religions and faith groups, is not and must not be allowed to be, immune from criticism, or from critics whose experience is so virulent that it has to be repressed.
As Obama recently said of the Republican stance on voter repression, "that is not a sign of strength but a sign of weakness"....so too is our (and Brandeis') caving in this situation. Are we so weak and afraid that we do not have to courage, the conviction and the determination to withstand and even to push back against this political campaign to discredit Ms Ali?